I have been in the world of entrepreneurship for more than 5 years, I have spoken with dozens of people who have innovative ideas and do not know how to start. For this reason, I want to give you some practical tips to execute your goals.
Before thinking about some ideas or products, the first thing to do is to understand the problem.
1. Innovative ideas start as a solution a personal problem:
Many people start to create a product, invest money, time and effort in developing it without even stopping to think if they would use the product they are going to create.
If you are the user of your product it is because you have that need, so you will be the first critic of your idea. Banking, for example, was born because in a vacation I tried to control my expenses with a manual application (entering each expense), and after 3 days I stopped doing it. Continue reading: The 5 easiest ways to start your business
2. Talk to 10 friends about the problem that your innovative ideas will solve:
So consider that it is very “obvious” that your friends will want to use your product in the future, that does not mean that you have fully understood the need.
Do interviews where you only talk about the problem with your friends. In our case, we asked them:
- Do you control your finances?
- How often do you do it?
- Are you disciplined with this?
From this type of interviews, two friends told us that 80% of their things were paid with electronic money. At that time we discovered that if we developed a tool that would automatically register what you pay with electronic money, we would meet our need and that of our friends.
Keep in mind that in interviews you should never sell a product; we do not name it, we only ask them about their “problems” and/or “daily life”“.
3. Find out how big the problem is:
Once you know that several of your friends suffer from the same problem, perform an investigation of how big the problem is.
Do not delay months doing it, that’s wasting your time, with a week being disciplined is more than enough (and maybe even less).
Do not confuse this with market research and/or surveys to 2,000 people. For example, we found a study that said that 70% of online banking users in Latin America wanted more information about their finances.
4. Find a co-founder who complements your skills and provides feedback on your innovative ideas:
Actually, this was my first step with my partner, when we were studying at the university. However, if you already found a problem to solve with your innovative idea, you know why people have not been able to solve it, and also you know what happens to millions of people, you have the arguments to motivate a good co-founder.
If you know how to program get someone to sell, if you are a salesperson, get someone technical, in other words, someone who complements your skills.
It also expands your connections, looks for sites such as Entrepreneurship Stories , this blog will help you get an idea of the effort required to be an entrepreneur, give you tips and at the same time allow you to connect with other entrepreneurs, since it has a good number of followers on your social media page.
5. Create a Minimum Viable Product and quickly validate it in the market:
Having innovative ideas is not enough if your usability is not valid. Create a small product that allows you to validate if people will use what you are creating, in many cases you do not even have to build a website or develop a mobile app.
If several people and/or businesses start using your product and also are not close to you, it’s time to start, it’s time to risk. You can fail, but in the end, you will be calm to have risked and put your innovative ideas to life.
“Entrepbusiness” invited to you read this article: 12 innovative business ideas to create without money
